Lee Hill Road site in north Boulder eyed for mixed residential housing

North Boulder Alliance wary of affordable housing overload

Thistle Communities and Allison Management are under contract to buy the former fire training center in north Boulder from the county and turn it into a residential development with mixed market-rate and affordable housing.

Some north Boulder residents have said their community has too much affordable housing already, and future affordable housing projects should be located in other parts of the city.

But Gail Promboin of the North Boulder Alliance said she doesn't have a problem with Thistle Communities building on the site at 820 Lee Hill Drive, as long as they don't seek a rezoning that would increase density. The property is currently zoned RL-2, which allows for single-family detached homes and townhomes.

Promboin has lived near the former fire training center for more than a decade, and she said she's not concerned about her property value at this point. In some ways, housing would be an improvement, as long as there isn't too much of it.

"If Thistle wants to go ahead under the existing zoning, I think that's fine," Promboin said. "If they want to up the density, they'll have a fight on their hands."

Andy Allison, a principal at Allison Management, which is partnering with Thistle on the project, said he doesn't have site plans yet, but he's unlikely to ask for a rezoning.

He also expects that the mix of market-rate and affordable housing will be the minimum the city requires of all new housing projects -- 80 percent market-rate, 20 percent permanently affordable.

Allison Management has partnered with Thistle on two other Boulder projects. Yarmouth Way has a mix of 70 percent market-rate and 30 percent affordable. Another project, 1000 Rosewood, is 50-50, in large part because the city asked for a higher percentage of affordable housing as a condition of annexation.

Promboin said she'd like the city to develop policies to encourage more affordable housing in other parts of the city. North Boulder already has enough of it, she said.

"The issue that starts to trouble me is the concentration of affordable housing in north Boulder," she said. "It skews the diversity in a different way than the overall population with Boulder."

But Promboin said she doesn't expect neighbors to have a big problem with the particular project at 820 Lee Hill Drive.

The county has been using the property as a transportation maintenance facility since the new fire training center was built on Diagonal Highway near the Boulder Reservoir several years ago. The county decided to sell 820 Lee Hill Drive because it is building a new maintenance facility on Longhorn Road, north of Boulder.

Jana Petersen, the city's administrative services director, said the county had other offers, though she declined to discuss them, but decided to sell to Thistle because of Thistle's mission of providing affordable workforce housing.

Thistle and Allison Management are under contract to purchase the property for $3 million. The listing price was $3.25 million.